On the contrary, no individual could fully replace Qadhafi, whose role and status is uniquely tied to the 'revolution' that he brought to Libya through the 1969 coup, and the jamahiriya political system (of theoretical direct democracy) that he developed during the 1970s.

He doesn't see the uprising as a mass rebellion against his leadership but as a flare-up of old tribal rivalries - a reactionary movement bent on destroying the revolutionary spirit of the world's first and only people's jamahiriya.

"Gadhafi's sort of joke jamahiriya system has mutated into some kind of crony capitalism," Marks said.

An engineering graduate, Figliozzi was among more than 100 young Italian women who were today recovering their equilibrium after a characteristically bizarre encounter with the "guide of the first of September great revolution of the socialist people's Libyan Arab jamahiriya".

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Jamahiriya (Arabic جماهيرية, strict transliteration ǧam�?hīriyya) is an Arabic term generally translated as "state of the masses." The term, a neologism coined by Muammar al-Gaddafi, is intended to be a generic term describing a type of state, like a "republic ruled by the masses."

In practice, the only state to which the term has ever been applied is Libya, of which Gaddafi is the Caid (translated Leader; strict transliteration Q�?ʼid).